12 Drivers Wired With Electrodes to Study Polestar 4 Performance

Twelve drivers wore heart rate monitors and skullcaps studded with electrodes while lapping a Swedish race circuit in two versions of the Polestar 4, part of a pilot study Polestar ran with researchers at the University of Oxford to measure how vehicle performance registers in the human body, according to Ars Technica.

The project set out to answer a question a stopwatch cannot: what does a faster car actually do to the person behind the wheel. "As electric cars redefine what performance can be, we wanted to understand something that can't be captured by a specification sheet alone: the human experience behind the wheel," said Christian Samson, Polestar's head of product attributes, in comments reported by Ars Technica. "Working with University of Oxford allows us to look at performance through a different lens—connecting the engineering of the car with the experience of the person driving it."

Why is Polestar studying driver physiology instead of lap times?

Acceleration, top speed, and lap times are straightforward to log; cornering force and output in horsepower are specification-sheet numbers that performance EVs now chase in what Ars Technica describes as an ongoing arms race. What those figures leave out is the driver's own response — heart rate, stress, trust in the machine — and that gap is what Polestar and Oxford set out to close. Samson's framing treats the car's engineering and the driver's lived experience as two halves of the same question, rather than assuming faster automatically means better for the person in the seat.

How was the study set up at the Gotland Ring?

The pilot involved 12 drivers who track-tested both rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive versions of the Polestar 4 at Sweden's Gotland Ring, according to Ars Technica. The Polestar 4 is the automaker's midsize crossover, described in the outlet's reporting as a Porsche Macan alternative no longer sold in the United States. Each driver was fitted with heart rate monitors and electrode-studded skullcaps, and the cars' built-in gaze-tracking driver monitoring system recorded where drivers looked. That physiological data was layered with vehicle telemetry and post-drive interviews. Drivers first lapped the circuit gently, then pushed the cars dynamically, giving researchers a baseline-to-peak comparison for the same person in the same car.

What separates the all-wheel-drive Polestar 4 from the single-motor version?

The AWD performance Polestar 4 produces 536 hp (400 kW), roughly double the output of the single-motor car, Ars Technica reported. On track, that gap showed up as higher G loads under both cornering and acceleration. Peak acceleration measured 32 percent higher in the AWD car, and drivers needed 15 percent less steering effort to match a fast lap set in the rear-drive version — a sign, according to the reporting, that the more powerful car required less physical correction to hold a line.

How did drivers rate the two versions?

Interviews conducted after the laps showed a clear preference for the more powerful car. On a 0-to-100 scale, drivers rated the AWD Polestar 4 at 89.2 for performance and 93 for overall experience, compared with 67.7 for performance and 77.9 overall for the rear-drive version, Ars Technica reported. The numeric gap was echoed in how drivers talked about the cars: the AWD version produced a stronger sense of trust in the vehicle and kept attention locked on driving. More than one driver likened the experience to a "controlled roller coaster," according to the outlet's account of the interviews.

What does the data suggest about performance beyond the spec sheet?

Taken together, the acceleration figures, steering-effort reduction, and physiological readings point toward the same conclusion drivers reached in their own words: more power did not just produce faster numbers, it changed how in-control drivers felt doing the driving. Samson's comment that performance "is not simply about going faster" was cut off in the sourced material, but the surrounding data — lower steering effort, higher confidence ratings, and descriptions of engagement rather than strain — supports the idea that engineers can use physiological and interview data as a secondary measure alongside lap times when deciding how a performance variant should feel. Ars Technica's reporting frames the exercise as a pilot, with 12 drivers and one track session, leaving open how the methodology might scale to larger samples or different vehicle platforms.